


The King of All Wild Things

by songlin



Series: Powerful, Beautiful and Without Regret [4]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Alternate Universe - Vampire, Alternate Universe - Werewolf, Dreams, M/M, Nightmares, Vampire Sherlock, Vampires, Werewolf John, Werewolves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-13
Updated: 2012-05-13
Packaged: 2017-11-05 06:48:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,377
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/403554
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/songlin/pseuds/songlin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock doesn’t dream when he’s hungry, and he doesn't miss the dreams. Everything changes with John.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The King of All Wild Things

**Author's Note:**

> Oddly, I started this about two days before Maurice Sendak died.  
> Unbeta'd, as Cin is internet-less post-move, the poor thing. I'd die slowly. Critique always appreciated!
> 
> Theme: We Love You So by Carter Burwell

Sherlock doesn’t dream when he’s hungry. It’s one of the many reasons he’ll push himself so hard, test his limits, see how long he can go without drinking before his strength starts to wane. Even when he has fed he rarely sleeps, once a month if he can manage it. All in all, it’s been decades since he’s dreamed. For this, he is thankful. He doesn’t miss his dreams.

Everything changes with John.

Suddenly Sherlock is well-fed and sated nearly all the time, and frequently falls asleep just because he forgets _not_ to. Still, he is very satisfied in most aspects, so the dreams he has are generally pleasant. John is in some. In others, Sherlock is alone, which is just as good sometimes.

It surprises him at first. When he was younger and feeding nightly on pretty young coke fiends, his nightmares were dark and full of terrors. It has been decades since his sleep’s been full of bright and beautiful things, of lying in the sun with someone he would kill to protect and of making love in a house that burned down a century ago. But he adjusts, and he begins to look forward to the dreamscapes in his head.

Then John starts dying.

They’re not unbearable, these nightmares, because he knows that is what they are. He understands that not all sanguinarians lucid dream, but Sherlock has not had a dream that could fool him since before Mycroft ripped him open and drained him dry. But they’re not easy to stand.

John shot through the chest in an alleyway, bleeding out into the pavement. John riddled through with cancer, spending his full moon in a hospital bed, and he’s so weak they don’t even have to restrain him. John crossing the street when a taxi mows him down, bones snapping and tissue tearing. John going from laughing and alive to cold and dead on the floor in seconds, a tiny storm of electricity in his brain stopping him in his tracks and annihilating him before he can blink.

Worst are the dreams that start like the old ones, with the two of them naked, hips rolling together, and then Sherlock’s fangs pierce skin and it hurts John, and Sherlock doesn’t stop drinking until the blood is lukewarm and slow, and when he sits up, John does not smile at him and give him a lazy kiss.

From every one of these dreams, Sherlock wakes shaking and feeling sick.

He’d stop sleeping again, but he knows it would worry John, and he does _not_ want to explain the dreams to him. He tries once or twice anyway, and finds that it’s almost impossible to resist falling asleep with a warm body against you and nothing else to do with your brain besides. And besides, he can stand these. They’re dreams. He knows this before, throughout, and after. They’re _dreams_.

Then there came the night with two Johns.

There is one who is fully human, whole and unscarred. It’s unnerving. Sherlock prefers the John with danger swimming in his navy blue eyes even when he laughs. Beside him is a John with that and more. The danger isn’t just swimming in his eyes, it’s trembling in his limbs and pulsing in the lips stretched across his long, white teeth. Sherlock’s fingers are buried in the thick fur on the back of his neck.

The human John is shaking, eyes wide and afraid. Sherlock has never seen him like this. Since he has known him, John has responded to fear with calm and a steady hand. Has it not always been so? He doesn’t want to believe it.

“Don’t,” he is saying. “Don’t--please don’t, don’t hurt me--”

The wolf is laughing.

“You couldn’t stop us,” says the wolf. “Wouldn’t. Not if you tried.”

The human John (the wrong John--no, the John Sherlock has never--no, that’s not right either) looks wildly from Sherlock to the wolf and back to Sherlock. “Stop him,” he pleads. “Please, Sherlock, let me live.”

Sherlock is speaking. He does not remember giving himself permission to. “I’ll eat you up, I love you so,” he says. It sounds familiar, but he cannot place it.

“Like he said.” The wolf laughs so hard at that it comes out a howl. “Let the wild rumpus start!”

He turns and tries to run, but the wolf is fast and strong. He catches John’s ankle in his teeth and tears his Achilles tendon open. It rolls up his leg like a window shade, and he drops. The wolf pounces. Blood spatters onto Sherlock’s face. This is not precisely physically possible, but that’s not what he’s thinking about. He’s thinking about how hot and rich it is, and diving forward with his fangs out even while John is screaming and Sherlock is thinking _no, no, this is WRONG--_

\--and then he’s awake, mouth full of blood and John’s hands on his arms and his weight across his legs. He can’t be there, it’s not safe, so Sherlock pushes him, and forgets to be gentle. When his vision clears of the red haze and he can see again, he realizes he’s shoved John straight off the bed.

“Jesus Christ, Sherlock,” says John, picking himself up with a wince. “What the _hell?”_

Sherlock licks his lips. He’s bitten his tongue; that’s the blood. “Nightmare,” he says evenly. “It’s fine. I’m alright.”

John barks out a laugh. He sounds almost exactly like the wolf. Something recoils in Sherlock’s stomach.

“You’re bloody well _not,”_ says John.

He reaches for Sherlock’s hand. Sherlock jerks away.

“You don’t want to do that,” he says.

“I really do,” John insists.

“You _don’t.”_

“For the love of--” He throws up his arms. “Fine. Don’t let me help you. Are you going back to sleep, or--”

Sherlock shakes his head violently. _“No.”_

John puts his hands on his hips. There’s sympathy playing at the corners of his mouth and eyes, but John tired is not an entirely reasonable man. “Fine. Can you lie still and let me sleep, or am I kicking you onto the couch?”

Sherlock scowls, rolls over, pulls his knees to his stomach and tucks his hands up under his chin.

John rolls his eyes. “Fine.” He climbs back under the covers and is asleep again in under five minutes. _Military training,_ Sherlock supposes.

He can still feel the imagery from the nightmare flickering at the outskirts of his subconscious, and shuts it out with an angry huff. Next to him, John stirs, but does not wake.

_I didn’t know. Why didn’t I know? I always know. I see the things that don’t make sense and know it’s not real, why didn’t I know?_

_Mycroft sleeps. Mycroft must dream._

_I’m not asking Mycroft for anything._

_Perhaps I’m sleeping too often, or feeding too much._

_Perhaps I love him too much._

At this, Sherlock stops cold, the cogs of his thoughts grinding to a halt.

“No,” he says aloud.

_If that’s the case, I’ll suffer the nightmares. But I mustn’t hurt John again._

He rolls over, winds an arm around John’s waist and pulls his back flush to Sherlock’s stomach. He blinks drearily and grimaces.

“I was a bit of an arse, wasn’t I?”

Sherlock says nothing and kisses a scar on John’s neck. _I put it there._

“Want to talk about it?”

Sherlock’s tongue flicks out from between his lips and swipes over the scar. John shivers.

“Okay, okay. Are you alright?”

Sherlock scrapes his teeth across it, light, with no trace of fangs. John sighs.

“Please.”

“Nightmare,” Sherlock murmurs into John’s spine. “You were in it.”

The air John exhales sounds like _“oh.”_ He rolls over to face Sherlock, who shuts his eyes. He doesn’t want to see John’s face just now. He is afraid he will see the wolf, laughing, just before he pounces.

“I’m not dead yet,” John says, brushing the backs of his knuckles against Sherlock’s cheek.

Sherlock leans into the touch. “I know.”

John nudges closer and kisses him. Sherlock can feel it to the very pit of him.

“Keep knowing it, okay?”

Sherlock nods.

\---

_And Max, the king of all wild things, was lonely and wanted to be where someone loved him best of all._


End file.
